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Neem Oil - The Qualities and Benefits of Neem Oil
Among neem's many benefits, the one that is most unusual and
immediately practical is the natural control of farm and household
pests. Some entomologists now conclude that neem has such remarkable
powers for controlling insects that it will usher in a new era
in safe, natural pesticides. Extracts from its extremely bitter
seeds and leaves may, in fact, be the ideal insecticides: they
attack many pestiferous species; they seem to leave people,
animals, and beneficial insects unharmed; they are biodegradable;
and they appear unlikely to quickly lose their potency to a
buildup of genetic resistance in the pests. All in all, neem
seems likely to provide nontoxic and long-lived replacements
for some of today's most suspect synthetic pesticides.
Neem Use in History
That neem can foil certain insect pests is not news to Asians.
For centuries, India's farmers have known that the trees withstand
the periodic infestations of locusts. Indian scientists took up
neem research as far back as the 1920s, but their work was little
appreciated elsewhere until 1959 when a German entomologist witnessed
a locust plague in the Sudan. During this onslaught of billions
of winged marauders, Heinrich Schmutterer noticed that neem trees
were the only green things left standing. On closer investigation,
he saw that although the locusts settled on the trees in swarms,
they always left without feeding. To find out why, he and his
students have studied the components of neem ever since.
Schmutterer's work (as well as a 1962 article by
three Indian scientists showing that neem extracts applied to
vegetable crops would repel locusts) spawned a growing amount
of lively research. This, in turn, led to three international
neem conferences, several neem workshops and symposia, a neem
newsletter, and rising enthusiasm in the scientific community.
By 1991, several hundred researchers in at least a dozen countries
were studying various aspects of neem and its products.
How Neem Works
Like most plants, neem deploys internal chemical defenses to protect
itself against leaf-chewing insects. Its chemical weapons are
extraordinary, however. In tests over the last decade, entomologists
have found that neem materials can affect more than 200 insect
species as well as some mites, nematodes, fungi, bacteria, and
even a few viruses. The tests have included several dozen serious
farm and household pests-Mexican bean beetles, Colorado potato
beetles, locusts, grasshoppers, tobacco budworms, and six species
of cock-roaches, for example. Success has also been reported on
cotton and tobacco pests in India, Israel, and the United States;
on cabbage pests in Togo, Dominican Republic, and Mauritius; on
rice pests in the Philippines; and on coffee bugs in Kenya. And
it is not just the living plants that are shielded. Neem products
have protected stored com, sorghum, beans, and other foods against
pests for up to 10 months in some very sophisticated controlled
experiments and field trials.
Researchers at the U.S. Department of Agriculture
have been studying neem since 1972. In laboratory experiments,
they have found that the plant's ingredients foil even some of
America's most voracious garden pests. For instance, in one trial
each half of several soybean leaves was sprayed with neem extracts
and placed in a container with Japanese beetles. The treated halves
remained untouched, but within 48 hours the other halves were
consumed right down to their woody veins. In fact, the Japanese
beetles died rather than eat even tiny amounts of neem-treated
leaf tissue. In field tests, neem materials have yielded similarly
promising results. For instance, in one test in Ohio, soybeans
sprayed with neem extract stayed untouched for up to 14 days;
untreated plants in the same field were chewed to pieces by various
species of insects, seemingly overnight.
excerpted from www.commonsensecare.com
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